Kosher Travel: No Worries, Just Pure Adventure

No longer will you have to worry about finding kosher food or a place to stay for Shabbat - travelling kosher shouldn't be a hassle.

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Rona Michelson, 03/07/14 14:58

Travel kosher without the hassle

Einat Shoval

It used to be that if you were an observant Jew, traveling was like a military operation. It required days or weeks of planning.

You had to research your destination, scout out hotels within walking distance of kosher restaurants (if there were any), figure out which supplies to take (cans of tuna? Crackers? Dried fruits and nuts?), and hope that you would be near enough to a market to buy the fresh fruits or vegetables to prepare with the knife and cutting board you had brought.

Half of your suitcase would be food and utensils. You hoped you might meet someone who would take you in for a Shabbat meal - again, assuming there were any Jews in the area where you were staying!

You could enjoy the sights, but eating would be a challenge. If you were not near an established Jewish community, Shabbat was likely to be a very quiet, very lonely day.

But it is not like that anymore. Now there are kosher tour companies that enable you to pack your clothes and personal items and leave the worries about meals and Shabbat to them.

When you take a kosher tour, your guide, a shomer/et mitzvot, will check the kitchen and to make sure all the ingredients that will go into your meal are kosher - from meat and fish to checking vegetables for bugs, and ensuring that all preparation and cooking is done using only kosher utensils - which will either be prearranged at the location or brought along with the group. Kosher foodstuffs not available locally are carried with the group.

Leave it all to the experts

Kosher travel today offers tourists all of the benefits that they require.

Someone else has worried about a good hotel, a good location, and flights that make the most of the time available. Someone else has the experience to plan travel at your destinations in the most efficient manner, taking you from place to place using the shortest routes, pacing the traveling so that it is varied and neither too strenuous nor too sedentary. Your kosher travel company will be informed as to opening hours and best times to visit, and will employ local guides who speak the native language as well as English to accompany you in addition to the company's guide who is with you for the entire tour.

Together they will bring you to see the highlights of each place you travel, including the history, customs, lifestyle and current issues in the locales you visit, while maintaining an interesting and entertaining vibe throughout. The company arranges for tickets to performances and enables you to meet with local people and to begin to understand their lifestyles and world views. In addition, your kosher travel company makes sure to locate places of Jewish interest wherever you go.

People who take kosher tours with a group of strangers inevitably find they are traveling with friends - people with similar interests and people who like themselves are adventurous and interesting. Typically, travelers keep in touch with each other after the tour and many times choose to travel together again.

Traveling with a kosher travel company enables you to have experiences you never dreamed of!

You can travel with us the Jewish and Kosher way all around the world, to the following destinations: Japan, China, Vietnam, Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru, Mexico and Guatemala, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, South Africa and of course in Europe, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and more.

We offer Kosher vacations in Switzerland and Holland as well – the perfect summer experience.